Tom Herman

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Startup.com does not tell an exceptional story. Its melodrama is actually quite common, the tale of something that happens every day -- and much much more so in the year 2000 and on into 2001.

Documentarians Chris Hegedus (The War Room) and Jehane Noujaim were extraordinarily lucky to be at the right place at the right time in order to capture the story of govWorks.com, an Internet startup that aimed to make it easy for anyone to interact with their state and local governments through the Web -- to pay taxes or parking tickets, renew a driver's license, etc.

Tom Herman follows up his appearance as the ill-fated #2 of Startup.com with this sweet and shortish documentary following a group of American students to Cuba on a sort of cultural exchange. What follows is largely the kind of dorm room philosophizing you'd expect from high schoolers, intercut with a good amount of countryside panoramas and city-slum verite. In the end, nothing is resolved, but some friends are made. It's not quite a home movie and it's not quite a docudrama, but Herman's little film has heart, and that counts for something.